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Thursday, December 07, 2017

I break bread with the late heads Pickin' their brains for angles on all the evils that the game'll do It gets dangerous, money and power is changin' us And now we're lethal, infected with D'evils

About a year ago I undertook this ambitious (for me) and enjoyable painting project for a particular miniature company. I haven't heard a peep since about them being released or not, so I've decided to share them here. I was really impressed by these horned aliens: both the sculpting quality and the variety of poses are excellent. They look like they're coolly stalking across a battlefield, fearlessly picking off their outmatched opponents with high-tech hand weapons.

They're both menacing characters, and imposingly large in 15 mm scale:

Saturday, December 02, 2017

I was intrigued that Bad Squiddo Games (aka Annie Norman), purveyor of "believable female miniatures", made not one, but three models of this controversial, but memorable figure from India's recent history. Was she a hero avenging women and the mistreated lower castes? Or simply a murdering brigand? As usual, real people can't be pigeonholed, and her story holds a mirror to the desperation and unjust treatment women and lower-caste Indians faced during her lifetime, and continue to struggle against today.

Seema Biswas as Devi in her 1994 biopic;
obviously the model for this sculpt.

Friday, November 24, 2017

It wasn't much of a stretch to turn one of the female figures from Ion Age's "Entertainers" set into the iconic 1980's Marvel Comics singing mutant heroine. The rollerskates and disco club base are my addition; if I was less lazy I suppose could have given her feathered hair too...

Dazzler's first appearance, in 1980.

Dazzler ended up becoming a pretty decent second-tier superhero in her own right, but her origins were squarely in the realm of cross-marketing:Dazzler was originally a project commissioned by Casablanca Records in the mid-to-late 1970s to be a cross-promotion in the mold of KISS, who had two successful comic book tie-in super-specials by the end of 1977...Romita, Jr. originally intended for the character to resemble model, actress, and singer Grace Jones, but representatives from Filmworks – wanting to promote model and actress Bo Derek – insisted on design changes to reflect Derek's features. - Wikipedia

Wednesday, November 08, 2017

When the People's Planetary Protectorate military procurement team requested a speeder design from a collective that made agricultural equipment, they really should have known what to expect: a speeder that looks like a tractor. But, built around a compact power plant designed to drive 30-ton megaharvesters, the unattractive result was what the committee ultimately described as "extremely zippy".

Wednesday, November 01, 2017

We made a pretty sharp trick-or-treating crew, I think. Alas my wife didn't have any costume ideas she wanted to go with, but I told her that next year if she thinks of something I'll do whatever it takes to help make it happen :)

Thursday, October 19, 2017

I don't often pull together seasonal pieces in time, but here are two kooky and spooky figures from The Ion Age. Both were monthly freebies, from 2013 (Skeleton) and 2014 (Witch). I replaced the Skeleton's head with a slightly better 15 mm skull from Alternative Armies, and added a festive jack-o-lantern (not hard to sculpt, as it turns out!) and another skull to give the Witch's base some flair.

Tuesday, October 03, 2017

Grinding through the churning mud and choking fumes of the future battlefield, the Shia Khan face their enemies with blistering firepower and relentless mechanized advance. With the help of clever tactics and a willingness to sacrifice, their seemingly crude weapons and vehicles can hold their own against sleeker foes...

I originally intended to do an orange/black version of the studio paint job on these Shia Khan from The Ion Age. But then I had a look at their little gas masks, and so now they're my grimdark "World War I in space" faction... with no apologies to the Death Korps of Krieg etc.

Sunday, September 24, 2017

Not a lot of painting lately... September is a busy month. But I have been up to something this weekend.

Yep... one three-year-old sized Iron Man Halloween costume, coming up! I'm a little wary of completing it too far ahead of time, lest he change his invariably fickle mind, but I'm banking on the finished product being so appealing that he won't :)

(Credit where credit's due, I adapted the helmet template found here to make the 3/4 head mask...)

Sunday, August 13, 2017

Here's my second Space Bunny Arts figure, a roguish smuggler who's not afraid to fly dangerous cargo or sling a blaster or two around (I wish I could say this paint job was inspired by Emily Ong's gender-bending Han Solo cosplay from about 5 years ago, but I didn't see that until I was mostly done). I stayed pretty close to the iconic Star Wars outfit, but put the red "Corellian Bloodstripes" on the jacket sleeves where they'd be more visible.

And a group shot with my other SBA figure, Abi bin Qanubi (sold as "Jehn Kibo")

Tuesday, August 08, 2017

There must be the look ahead, there must be a realization of the fact that to waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.
- Theodore Roosevelt, 1907.

I recently took a little break from our hectic summer schedule to paint up this cute little trash-picking automaton from Ground Zero Games. He's less grungy and battered than the guy in the film, but I like the sculpt and didn't want to obscure it behind a bunch of rust and weathering. Or I'm lazy, pick one.

Wednesday, July 12, 2017

I got a start on my second Space Bunny Arts figure today... the roguish "Sola Haru". Another crisp, characterful sculpt from SBA, but initially I was puzzled by her fairly generic handguns. Plain boxy bodies, round barrels; oddly not up to the standard of the rest of the sculpt...?

And then I realized... they're that way for a reason. You're supposed to do things to them. And so I chose the obvious route, making them look as much like a certain space smuggler's iconic pistol as possible. Some fussy work, and bits from my trusty 1:700 Soviet navy spare parts sprue, and voila:

Obviously, you could easily go a different route. Perhaps something more Western-inspired, or stubby and ugly-looking. Sometimes with an off-the-shelf figure, "less is more"...

Friday, July 07, 2017

So I finally got my first Space Bunny Arts figure painted! I interpreted her as an older woman, who's spent years hiding in a remote desert from... something. Possibly an evil galactic empire. This is a lovely sculpt: well-posed, with cleanly rendered features and amazing fabric drapery. A lot of fun to paint.

I feel like this paint job is similar to, and owes a lot to, Matt Sullivan's excellently-painted Imperial Assault figures... but it's hard to say how. I have spent a lot of time admiring his work. Anyway, I think this figure would fit in really well with that line.

Thursday, June 29, 2017

"This is the captain. We have a little problem with our entry sequence, so we may experience some slight turbulence and then... explode. "

A former rebel, a thief, a freelance trader and an all-round rogue with a heart of gold, the Captain inspires loyalty in his crew of misfits and outlaws. His battle-worn brown coat reminds him that while he may once have been on the losing side, he's still not convinced it was the wrong one...

Ship and crew

Well, that makes the entire crew... definitely a couple of nice sets (1, 2) from Ground Zero Games. I picked up the perfect ship for them too, the "Glow-worm class freighter", in roughly the same scale as the last one I painted.

Friday, June 23, 2017

Here's my second-last post of GZG's spaceship crew figures: the muscle. Here we have the Captain's loyal war buddy turned First Mate, and a distinctly more mercenary fighter from the crew. Both very deadly in a fight. I'll admit to sculpting on the mercenary's hat after painting was well underway... not the first time I've done that. Sometimes you just start to see that a figure needs something extra.

Saturday, June 10, 2017

Here's another model that's a bit different from my usual fare. It's not often that I have a chance to tout fantastic(al) Latin-American author Jorge Luis Borges on this blog, but here's my chance. The griffon-like Peryton is his creation, from his 1957 Book of Imaginary Beings. If you read one Latin-American author ever... maybe it should be Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but Borges seems a lot more fun ;)

The figure is Reaper Bones Peryton (A Julie Guthrie sculpt!); it was a Christmas gift from my daughter :)

As usual, I'm seeing a lot of things I should improve or fix now that I've taken photos, but that will have to wait for another time...